Republicans, escalating attacks on FBI, vow to keep director in contempt

House Republicans said Monday they would move this week to defame FBI director Christopher A. Wray before Congress, escalating their attacks on the federal law enforcement agency as they seize evidence of misconduct by President Biden.

Representative James R. Comer, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the Oversight Committee, made the announcement after calling FBI officials to Capitol Hill for a closed-door briefing on a document containing an unverified allegation of bribery against the Mr Biden when he was Vice President. president. Trump’s Justice Department investigated the allegation, involving his son Hunter Biden in Ukraine, in 2020, but prosecutors were unable to substantiate the allegations, according to two people familiar with the case.

But Mr Comer, who has said he is investigating whether Mr Biden traded his office for money, has repeatedly insinuated there is more to it; on Monday, he claimed the claim “has never been refuted”.

At the urging of the chairman, the team of Mr. Wray the document to a secure area of ​​the Capitol on Monday and inform Mr. Comer and Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the committee, about 90 minutes left. But Mr Comer later complained that citing concerns about protecting the informant’s identity, the agency refused to allow other members of the commission to view it.

“We will now begin contempt of Congress hearings this Thursday,” Mr. Comer told reporters on Capitol Hill, adding, “The ball is in the FBI’s court.”

The emergence of the baseless allegation against Mr Biden is the latest bid by Republicans to undermine the credibility of the FBI, which they sought to defame after the agency and Justice Department launched an investigation into President Donald’s role J. Trump on the overturning of the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House.

Republicans have relied on former FBI agents — some of whom have embraced the Jan. 6 conspiracy theories and even accepted money from a Trump ally — to provide information against the agency.

Mr Raskin said the document Mr Comer sought and Mr Wray provided contained an allegation by an informant who passed on a conversation with someone else, which the informant was unable to corroborate. He said the Justice Department under former Attorney General William P. Barr “seeked no reason to escalate it from a review to a so-called preliminary investigation.”

“What we’re talking about is second-hand hearsay,” Mr Raskin said, adding: “That confidential human source said he had no way of knowing anything about the underlying veracity of the things he was being told.”

Drawing attention to the document is Mr. Comer to keep public attention on Hunter Biden’s business activities, which Republicans have made a focus of their investigations. for years.

“We don’t care if the allegations against Vice President Biden are accurate or not,” Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said on Fox News last week. “It’s our responsibility to make sure the FBI does its job.”

Republicans have long argued that Hunter Biden used his seat on the board of directors of Ukrainian energy company Burisma — for which he received significant amounts of money — to influence his father. In fact, a State Department official in 2015 expressed concern about the situation to a senior White House official.

Attention to Hunter Biden from the right peaked in 2020, after Mr Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, began distributing material about the younger Mr Biden, including photos and documents from a laptop he had left at a repair shop in Delaware. .

In 2020, Mr. Barr asked the top federal prosecutor in Pittsburgh, Scott W. Brady, to investigate any information Mr. Giuliani had on the Biden family and send anything to them that might be useful to other prosecutors.

A person familiar with the material who insisted on anonymity to discuss it said some of it was junk that clearly lacked credibility. The bribery allegation against Mr. Biden was never raised to a preliminary investigation, according to people familiar with the investigation, but Mr. Brady did forward some information from his work to other prosecutors.

Richard P. Donoghue, a top Trump Justice Department official at the time, agreed with Mr. Brady that the matter should not be investigated further, said one of those familiar with the matter.

Representative Dan Goldman, a New York Democrat and member of the oversight committee that investigated allegations against Mr Biden and Burisma as part of a 2019 House impeachment team, said the Republican narrative had failed because Mr Biden tried to crack down on corruption in Ukraine, do not turn on.

“The facts, in fact, contradict all Republican allegations,” Goldman said.

Following Monday’s briefing, Mr Comer claimed that the informant’s allegation is “currently being used in an ongoing investigation”, but Mr Raskin described Mr Comer as “recycling stale and debunked Burisma conspiracy theories long circulated by Rudy Giuliani “.

The FBI went to great lengths to make the documents available to lawmakers, first inviting them to the agency’s headquarters and then bringing the materials to the Capitol to meet their schedules.

“The FBI has consistently demonstrated its commitment to fulfilling the committee’s request, including by presenting the document in a reading room at the Capitol,” the agency said in a statement Monday. “The escalation to a contemptuous mood under these circumstances is unwarranted.”